1
Damn, 1994 might have been the last year I've read every single book nominated for a Hugo, either that was a damn good year for novels or else I was still in my indiscriminate consumption of SF fandom phase.
Who were the winners that attracted Ellison's ire?

2
Suddenly the sheer volume of vitriol and nastiness I've heard directed at Harlan make a great deal more sense.

Posted by: Doug O. at Sat Apr 18 12:43:29 2015 (S+cJ2)

3
Doug, back when Harlan was doing commentaries on the Sci-Fi Channel (and I think this clip is one of them), they announced him once with "If you haven't been insulted by something Harlan Ellison has said yet, you haven't been paying attention"...

In the 1994 Hugos, Ellison's "Mefisto in Onyx" was beaten for Best Novella by Harry Turtledove's "Down in the Bottomlands."

The 1994 Nebula awards saw Ellison's "The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore" lose the Short Story category to "Graves" by Joe Haldeman.

Looking at the winners of both awards in 1994, I'm going to guess that his "untalented writer" is Jack Cady, winner of the Nebula Best Novella for "The Night We Buried Road Dog." I only say that because Cady is the only winner that year that I've never heard of... upon looking him up, he was quite accomplished in both the SF and the Horror fields, like Ellison.

Not being an expert on either person, I can't really say. Ellison, being the acerbic sort that he's known to be, makes it just as likely that he believes Kim Stanley Robinson is a no-talent hack, or Turtledove, or Charles Sheffield, or anybody else.

7
There was also FTL Newsfeed and the "newscasts" of Dr. Franklin Ruehl. The fact that those shorts amused me was, in retrospect, an early indication of the deep flaws in my character.
Of course the lede here is that in 1994 people had already started gaming the Hugo's system. As Mitch pointed out, this corresponds to the time that the awards began changing from a recommendation to a warning sign. This phenomenon predated by 20 years the antics of certain despondent juvenile canines . It is not the actions of those residents of fandom's metaphorical pound that distresses their critics, but the exposure of how the game has been played.

8
Around that time there was reportedly a decision to limit the growth of WorldCon, which conveniently favors the crowd that already goes, and probably enhances their sense of personal ownership of the award.

I wrote up a proposed rules change (It's all the rage lately) and yesterday it got an insane number of hits, since it was on Michael Z. Williamson's facebook page.

9
Jack Cady is apparently a guy who got a fair amount of awards on the literary side of sf and horror, but he doesn't seem to have published much outside of literary stuff. I agree that I've never heard of him, but apparently a lot of literary mainstream folks have.

OTOH, if you're talking about who was likely to have been on the Internet in 1994 and "asking for votes," I'd have to say Kim Stanley Robinson.

But yeah, I don't remember this kerfuffle at all. It would probably be worth it to search rec.arts.sf.written, except that Google's search engine for newsgroups really stinks.

In the 1980's I dated a woman who was a big-time science fiction fan. She went to a lot of conventions and always went to WorldCon, and I was always a bit amazed at just how seriously she took the Hugo ballot. They really do think they're doing something really important when they vote.

And yet, they'll say, "We're not hard core; THOSE GUYS are hard core." There's a denigrating term, "SMOF" which stands for "Secret Masters of Fandom" used to refer to the especially extreme fans. (Someone started a tongue-in-cheek convention called SMOFCON; I have no idea if it is still running.)

11Jack Cady is apparently a guy... ...I agree that I've never heard of him, but apparently a lot of literary mainstream folks have.

Banshee, that is literally the only reason I assumed he was the target
of Ellison's ire. My assumption was that if I'd heard of them, it seems
unlikely that they'd be considered "no-talent hacks."

It was only after googling him that I discovered that he'd also be a
natural rival of Ellison, seeing how they both wrote the same sort of
thing. As I can't imagine Ol Unka Harlan passing up a chance to take a
shot at someone he'd be competing with, it made him even more likely in
my mind.

However, the number of ways that this logic chain can be incorrect is
staggeringly huge since it rests upon two thin reeds: my knowledge of
someone being a worthwhile predictor of something, and Ellison's thought
patterns.

12
Turtledove is the sort of writer who is persona non grata among the awards people, but I've never noticed him online, and definitely not back in 1994. Robinson is exactly the sort of writer who'd I'd expect to game the system - entitled and prone to morally muddled philosophizing. But if he was online in 1994 it was in different circles than where I went... he was a "movement" guy, though. Big noise among the regnant humanist movement of the time, that defeated the cyberpunks in the marathon simian poo-flinging tournaments of fandom in the long Eighties.

January 02, 2015

Thoughts on Privilege and Structural Bigotry

A friend of mine who I respect a tremendous amount pointed me to this SJW screed....approvingly.

The article is actually thoughtful and well written, and I don't mean "by the standards of SJW screeds" either. I'll elaborate on my disagreements with it in a moment, but I urge you to read the whole thing.

The article ( by a Laurie Penny) is actually a response to a blog comment by MIT Professor Scott Aaronson . The comment (which the author doesn't directly link to) is here. It is also thoughtful and I encourage you to take time to read it.

If you've read both article and post, you've already lost 12 minutes of your life so you won't miss what you'll lose by reading on.

October 30, 2007

Dating Dimorphism & Dispair

Over at Chizumatic is a long, thoughtful and rather brave disquisition on the pressing topic of otaku dream girls. Stephen points out the biggest of many hurdles there are to Otaku dating.....(incidentally, this very nebbish factor is one reason I tend not to like harem shows).

Meanwhile, in the UK a scientist has pointed out what might happen if we forlorn Otaku are allowed to breed, instead of being the evolutionary dead ends that so many of our predecessors were.

October 07, 2007

Of course I have known men who are evil and passive-aggressive and who have tremendously hurt some of my female friends who's only crime is to have trusted them. I've known women who's husbands lied to them about every single thing...from their ambition to their occupation. I've known other men whose every action was calculated to manipulate, control and isolate the women in their lives and when the girls in question washed their hands of the parasitic jerks found themselves bearing a terrible cost financially and professionally. I know of 4 cases in particular that could almost be out of a Stephen King novel or Satoshi Kohn movie....but they are so off the wall the women might be identifiable if I elaborated.

Evil knows no gender.

So why am I a bitter angry misogynist?

A college professor told me so.....

(Hence it must be true.&nbspThus, I must occasionally do misogenyblogging.

ergo....When a guy does something like I mentioned above, the universal response is to "Kill it with fire!!"

Winkler said the community has reached out to her, giving her everything from a five -bedroom home to live in for $150 to a car she's traded in for a sports utility vehicle.

Of course after there was a stink raised the murdering wench got custody of her kids... that was blocked, at least temporarily but the difference in standards is frankly scary...she HAD custody by default until a huge stink was raised.

The difference in cost of relationships is now at least as bad as it was in the pre suffrage days, but in the opposite direction. A guy who gets married is utterly at the mercy of the good faith of the woman in question to avoid financial ruin, the loss of his kids and have a domestic court-order put on him (which will put him on a list and ensure he can never own a gun).

The heartbreak endured by many (no means all) 1st wives is well documented, but "Starter Husbands" are seen as progress.

I could go on and be terribly bitter and hateful but I'm satisfied that my recognition of the problem fuffills my duties as a bonified Misogynist.

None of this decreases the hurt or injustice suffered by women who are the victims of abuse, stalking or ungodly creepieness (or, in many parts of the world terrible oppression from clitorectamies to murder). Horrors they endure simply because of their sex ....but these developments I'm talking about are not excused by those injustices either.

Anyway, as I'm officially a misogynist, rather than denying it I hereby embrace my cultural identity.

As such, my first official act shall be to call all those evil, manipulative, parasitic guys I mentioned....effeminate.

I don't care what gender someone is, sometimes things are just evil plain and simple. The fact that human beings can treat each other so horribly is depressing regardless of the sex of the agressor.

Disliking evil doesn't make you a mysaganist it makes you a compassionate human being.

Bigots need to get a clue. No one gets a pass to be an asshole just because of their gender, race, sexual orientation, physical challenges ect. Just because someone goes through crap doesn't mean they get a free pass to kill, maime or treat other people like dirt.